I am off to France tonight for two weeks of fun with Her Majesty's finest Reserve Forces. I will be spending 85% of my time sitting in a hole under a piece of chicken wire, observing stuff.

5% of my time will probably be spent tabbing around and letting off blank rounds in the general direction of the French Army (Chassuers Les Alpins, the ones with the giant berets).

For the remaining 10% of my time I may have to interact with some natives. Short of going on the obligatory school trip aged 12, and trying to smuggle a flick knife and a load of bangers back into the UK, my experience with the onion eating types is fairly limited.

Does anyone have any useful tips or phrases that may help me if I bump into any of them? I already know how to order a beer so that is 99.9% of my bases covered but what about the rest?

I'm kind of hoping I will end up in a barn and be looked after by the beautiful daughter of the Farmer who will hide me from the marauding hun, I'm pretty sure this kind of thing still happens.

I did the usual trips to france brest, st nizar and toulon not to impreesed with any of them. However went to normande in march to spend a week with my 3 sisters and brother plus othe halsfs as we don't get together much ( being as we are forces brats live all over the place) i was not looking forward to it as i always fonud the the welcome not to warm but had to admit the locals were great very helpful most spoke english and would go out their way for you. I alos noticed that when any body came in to a bar they went round shaking hands or doing that hug and kissing thing.

I did the usual trips to france brest, st nizar and toulon not to impreesed with any of them. However went to normande in march to spend a week with my 3 sisters and brother plus othe halsfs as we don't get together much ( being as we are forces brats live all over the place) i was not looking forward to it as i always fonud the the welcome not to warm but had to admit the locals were great very helpful most spoke english and would go out their way for you. I alos noticed that when any body came in to a bar they went round shaking hands or doing that hug and kissing thing.

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So your saying if I walk into a bar and see a gorgeous bird, I can walk up to her and kiss her? What about tongues is this allowed? Also please can you define 'hug', I take it to generally mean grabbing a handful of tit from behind and rubbing myself against her arse, this is OK right?

Its easy, use the international language of the Britisher ... speak very loudly and very slowly at whichever person you wish to impart or elicit information to or from, or whoever you require to provide you with some-such service or purveyance of goods ... simples

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Thats so true ,we get a lot of turist coming up here on the "Hurtigruter" mainly brits and germans,its so funny when they try and make me understand there very loud but slowwwwwww English,i normally reply " Hva sa du" and just let them ramble on a bit before i admit to being also from that little Island over there 8)

Oy froggy howmuchy euro for fcuky fcuky works well with the poorer peasant, but gieus a shag is well understood by the educated french women.
"Get your tits out "is universally understood if you put a "Mon Cheri "on the end they know you have breeding.

I seem to recall from my very distant schooldays that we read a book by a ancient Greek called Aristophanes called....

THE FROGS

An apt tale about Bacchus (of wino drinking fame) wishing to resurrect Euripides from the dead. A modern sequel would have Jean Monnet (born in Cognac) trying to resurrect Jean de Arc to save France from the Germans.